The invention relates to a comminuting and/or shredding arrangement which effects a cutting and/or tearing of materials, in particular disposable items made of paper and synthetic materials, such as disposable cups, disposable plates and disposable syringes.
At present, the shredding and comminuting arrangements for paper and synthetic materials produce very small particles as the end product by cutting and/or tearing the materials which are fed into the arrangement. Such arrangements have very small cutting discs and very fine tearing teeth to carry out a fine comminuting and shredding operation. Consequently, such arrangements are very sensitive to overloads and can easily be damaged if there is metal present in the material that is fed into the arrangements. The arrangements of the state of the art also require a high energy input. The material to be shredded or comminuted traverses these arrangements relatively slowly. Consequently, the machines of the state of the art carry out the comminuting and shredding in an uneconomical manner. This uneconomical operation is also present in those comminuting and shredding arrangements where the cutting and/or tearing members are mounted one behind the other, each carrying out a separate but progressive cutting and/or tearing operation. Such arrangements have very low efficiency while the machine itself is rather complex and costly and takes up a lot of space.